Chang Kim Archives - Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources

Legal | Nicaragua has refused entry to the French cartoonist Julien Berjeaut, who uses the pen name “Jul.” Berjeaut, who has done freelance work for Charlie Hebdo, was slated to be part of a panel titled “Humor against barbarity, homage to Charlie Hebdo and freedom of expression” at a conference in Managua. He made a video that was played at the event instead. Berjeaut said he doesn’t know why he was barred from the country. [Miami Herald]

Legal | Two men were questioned by police after they were spotted taking photos of the home of Laurent Sourisseau, the publishing director of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Sourisseau has been under police guard since the January attack on Charlie Hebdo‘s Paris headquarters, in which 12 people were killed. [The Local]

The web is the most decentralized comics platform: There’s no comiXology or Diamond Comic Distributors for the web, and a lot of webcomics, such as xkcd and Homestuck, have huge followings that don’t necessarily cross over into the rest of the comics world. At the same time, the question of how to make money by giving away a comic is one that creators answer over and over again, often in very different ways.

That’s why Tapastic is worthy of notice. It aims to be the central location, sort of a YouTube of webcomics, and the big news this week is that the company has signed a deal with the Korean Internet portal Daum Communications for $2 million of Series A funding. One immediate result of the partnership is that Tapastic has begun carrying an English-language version of the Like a Wolf, one of the most popular webcomics in Korea.

We talked to Tapastic CEO Chang Kim about his plans for Tapastic and how the Korean webcomics market differs from the U.S. market. Plus we also have an exclusive look at art from Like a Wolf.

Digital comics | ComiXology CEO David Steinberger dicusses the growth of the digital-comics platform, which was the top-grossing non-game iPad app for the third year in a row. “We’re finding that a larger and larger percentage of our user base — our new user base — is people who are buying comics for the very first time with us,” he tells Wired. Steinberger also hints at a next step for comiXology: curation. [Wired.com]

Comics | Torsten Adair looks back at some comics trends in from 2013 and looks ahead to what we can expect in 2014. [The Beat]

Comics | Dark Horse Editor-in-Chief Scott Allie discusses the relaunch of the publisher’s Alien, Predator and Alien vs. Predator series and the debut of Prometheus. [io9]